Advances in Robotics & Automation

In the context of therapeutic human-robot interaction, it is important to detect human contribution in interaction with robots, thus to auto-tune a robot to compensate or resist based on such input. A passive orthosis is used to evaluate interaction based on kinematic data and energy flow model to identify human-contributions during interaction experiments with healthy subject and stroke patient. The results identified presence of abnormal synergies between wrist and fingers, showed a skewness apparent in stroke patient performance which seemed to decrease over-time after the rehabilitation practice and indicated lack of fine control. We hypothesise that the presented methods can be used as potential performance benchmarks allowing to identify subject’s contribution during an interaction session but also to observe extent of fine motor control over time.

The advancing complexity of contemporary microelectronics has motivated research in high-level and system synthesis (HLS). Formal and intelligent HLS techniques are presented in this contribution, thus the generated implementation is correct-by-construction. These intelligent techniques include RDF (Resource Description Framework) and logic relations, along with automatic implementation options and they are employed for the transformations of a hardware compiler. The proposed toolset utilizes compiler-generators, RDF rules and logic programming in combination with XML validation of the internal state of the compiler. These intelligent and formal techniques make the whole transformation from source code to implementation, formal. The HLS tool is enhanced with the Parallel, Abstract Resource – Constrained Scheduler, which aggressively optimizes the initial state schedules, into maximally parallelized ones. A number of custom options are applied by the user of this toolset, in order to automatically compile selected testcases from real-world applications which prove the usability of the embedded scheduler and the formal compilation of the intelligent HLS compiler.

This paper proposes a modeling and simulation of three level piezoelectric transformer converters. The increasing utilization of piezoelectric transformers (PT) in power electronics requires fundamental analysis and design of PT power converters. In addition, the possibility of overcoming the essential limitations of PT power ability by a combined operation of PTs needs to be examined. These studies could provide wide opportunities for PT exploitation in power electronic circuits. The electrical circuit and model of piezoelectric transformers (PTs) ELS-60 is developed. Rosen-type PT and many other non-isolated conversion circuits have the inherit problem of the common neutral between the input and output that make it difficult to connect the output in series like the magnetic transformer. A new method based on the bootstrap method is proposed to solve the aforementioned problem. A new circuit for output summation of voltage level in the output side of each PT is developed. The impact of load and output filter capacitor on the conversion ratio and resonant frequency is discussed. The paper finally proposes a multilevel concept for many PT connected together for voltage summation. The method proposed can be applied to other multiple conversion circuits, which are based on common neutral between the input and output. The MATLAB/SIMULINK software used to design the required circuit diagram.

The healthcare systems require constant monitoring of patients and their records for speedy recovery and also to change the course of tablets at different stages. Most of the healthcare systems are found inefficient in their performance due to human errors in the monitoring of patients who are in the critical care units where human intervention is limited. The obvious reason would also be that the records i.e. the history of the patient may not be available before hand and the doctor will be misguided to prescribe wrong medicines and wrong treatment. Hence, we have come up with the concept of Medical Robot with Electronic health record system-a bridge between the man and the machine, to reduce these errors for effective performance.